Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/676

 672 DANTE Giovanni Villani, a contemporary of Dante, thus sketches him: "This man was a great scholar in almost every science, though a lay- man ; was a most excellent poet, philosopher, and rhetorician; perfect, as well in composing and versifying as in haranguing ; a most noble speaker This Dante, on account of his learning, was a little haughty, and shy, and disdainful, and, like a philosopher almost un- gracious, knew not well how to deal with un- lettered folk." Benvenuto da Imola tells us that he was very abstracted. Boccaccio paints him in this wise : " Our poet was of middle height; his face was long, his nose aquiline, his jaw large, and the lower lip protruding somewhat beyond the upper ; a little stooping in the shoulders ; his eyes rather large than small ; dark of complexion ; his hair and beard thick, crisp, and black; and his countenance always sad and thoughtful. His garments were always dignified, the style such as suited ripeness of years ; his gait was grave and gen- tlemanlike; and his bearing, whether public or private, wonderfully composed and polished. In meat and drink he was most temperate, nor was ever any more zealous in study or what- ever other pursuit. He spoke seldom, save when spoken to, though a most eloquent per- son. In his youth he delighted especially in music and singing, and was intimate with al- most all the singers and musicians of his day. He was much inclined to solitude, and familiar with few, and most assiduous in study as far as he could find time for it. Dante was also of marvellous capacity and the most tenacious memory." Various anecdotes of him are re- lated by Boccaccio, Saccheti, and others, none of them probable, and some of them at least 15 centuries old when revamped. One clear glimpse we get of him from the Ottimo Co- mento, the author of which says : " I, the writer, heard Dante say that never a rhyme had led him to say other than he would, but that many a time and oft he had made words say for him what they were not wont to ex- press for other poets." Looked at outwardly, the life of Dante seems to have been an utter and disastrous failure. What its inward satis- factions must have been, we, with the Paradiso open before us, can form some faint concep- tion. To him, longing with an intensity which only the word Dantesque will express, to real- ize an ideal upon earth, and continually baffled and misunderstood, the far greater part of his mature life must have been labor and sorrow. At the end of the Vita nuova, his first work, Dante wrote down the aspiration that God would take him to himself after he had written of Beatrice such things as were never yet written of woman. It was literally fulfilled when the Commedia was finished 25 years later. Scarce was Dante at rest in his grave when Italy felt instinctively that this was her great man. In 1329 Cardinal Poggetto caused Dante's treatise De Monarchia to be publicly burned at Bologna, and proposed further to dig up and burn the bones of the poet at Ra- venna, on the ground that he was a heretic ; but so much opposition was roused that he thought better of it. Yet this was during the pontificate of John XXII., the reproof of whose simony Dante puts in the mouth of St. Peter, who declares his seat vacant, whose damnation the poet himself seems to prophesy, and against whose election he had endeavored to persuade the cardinals in a vehement letter. In 1350 the republic of Florence voted 10 golden florins to be paid to Dante's daughter Beatrice, a nun in the convent of Santa Chiara at Ravenna. In 1396 Florence voted a monu- ment, and begged in vain for the metaphorical ashes of the man of whom she had threatened to make literal cinders if she could catch him alive. In 1429 she begged again, but Ravenna, a dead city, was tenacious of the dead poet. In 1519 Michel Angelo would have built the monument, but Leo X. refused to allow the sacred dust to be removed. Finally, in 1829, 508 years after the death of Dante, Florence got a cenotaph fairly built in Santa Croce, ugly beyond even the usual lot of such, with three colossal figures on it : Dante in the mid- dle, Italy on one side, and Poesy on the other. The tomb at Ravenna, built originally in 1483, by Cardinal Bembo, was restored by Cardinal Corsi in 1692, and finally rebuilt in its present form by Cardinal Gonzaga in 1780, all three of whom commemorated themselves in Latin inscriptions. It is a little shrine covered with a dome, not unlike the tomb of a Mohammedan saint, and has been the chief magnet which draws foreigners and their gold to Ravenna. In May, '1865, Ravenna, in common with all Italy, celebrated the 600th anniversary of the birth of Dante ; and in preparing for the festi- val a chest containing the bones of the poet was discovered concealed in a cavity near the mausoleum, where they had been hidden in the 17th century under an apprehension that they might be stolen by the Florentines. They were examined by a committee, pronounced to be genuine, and reinterred in the mausoleum. At Florence the anniversary was celebrated with great pomp, and on May 14 of the follow- ing year a colossal statue of the poet was erected in the square of Santa Croce. In 1373 (Aug. 9) Florence instituted a chair of the Divina, Commedia, and Boccaccio was named first professor. He accordingly began his lec- tures on Sunday, Oct. 3, following, but his comment was broken off abruptly at the 17th verse of the 17th canto of the Inferno by the illness which ended in his death, Dec. 21, 1375. Among his successors were Filippo Yillani and Filelfo. Bologna was the first to follow the example of Florence, Benvenuto da Imola having begun his lectures, according to Tiraboschi, as early as 1375. Chairs were es- tablished also at Pisa, Venice, Piacenza, and Milan before the close of the century. The lectures were delivered in the churches and on feast days. Balbo reckons that the MS. copies ies